RE: Plagiarism/ack!

[Tim Shearon]

Paul Smith wrote:

> Now, if this were to appear in a student's paper, it would simply be a
>clear case of plagiarism (obviously unintentional, though, in light of the
>citation). But this was her response on an assignment specifically about
>learning to proper paraphrase sources in order to _avoid_ plagiarism.

Paul: I'm not so sure I agree with your reasoning. Though it _may_ be true, it is also possible that the student just did not think you'd grade that carefully (i.e., actually look at or know the source well enough!) and knowingly plagarised the sentences.

you then said:
> But what intrigues me is
>the question of what she believed her task was. What is it in her past
>educational experience that made her think that this might be an acceptable
>response to the assignment? (she did this twice on the assessment, by the
>way). It's a remarkable confusion, and I don't think it's an accident. I
>suspect that she was (unintentionally) taught this by something in her
>earlier writing instruction, and I'd love to know what.

I doubt it was unintentional at all (the teaching her to do it this way, I mean). I suspect more strongly that this is exactly what she may have been taught (assuming we are assuming it wasn't intentional copying). This is precisely what many of my students do on first drafts but they add the "appropriate" quotation marks to muddle the crime (so to speak). I think this type of writing is taught (not always but often) by teachers who themselves have been taught and used this type of writing. This is why I all but forbid the use of quotation in papers. It invariably causes problems and some students seem to hit a brick wall. I've even had students tell me that "you cannot write without using quotation marks"! (So what I'm saying is that the monkey has been put onto our backs to either accept this as a valid writing style- and who would- or we have to engage in a bit of pedantry and help them learn to write using their own ideas. At the same time we must know that they will begin to slip and make other errors that we will have to correct.)



> This makes me think that there's a wide gray area between the two
>processes. I think of myself as doing something more like summarizing when I
>describe the methods used in an earlier study, though it's certainly closer
>to paraphrasing than what I do when I summarize a study's results. I guess
>my failure to distinguish the two processes comes from the fact that I
>essentially NEVER paraphrase in the traditional sense as part of my work.

Exactly. To look at that slightly differently, we have to step back and realize that our students don't understand the assignment of writing in your own words. They think that they are supposed to paraphrase. One could, by the way, get lost in the argument that they weren't trained to do this but are engaging in lazy thinking and trying to pull the wool over our eyes (so to speak). Personally, I doubt that they are intentionally being lazy (for I see that as a bit of a contradiction!) but if they are they will quickly see that it is more difficult that just writing well to begin with and that will end that.
Just MHO
Tim S. _______________________________________________________
Timothy O. Shearon, PhD
Albertson College of Idaho
Department of Psychology
2112 Cleveland Blvd
Caldwell, Idaho

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